Dedicated to the preservation of Long Island's 'gold coast' estates and other things old.

Friday, March 30, 2012

The Dr. Clarence C. Rice Estate

The Dr. Clarence C. Rice estate designed by Grosvenor Atterbury c. 1899 in East Hampton. Rice, an ear, nose and throat specialist, practiced for fifty years and was connected to the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital where he was Professor of Diseases of the Nose and Throat and Emeritus Professor of Laryncology. He was the house doctor for the Metropolitan and Hammerstein Opera Houses and treated many notable singers. Some of his other notable patients included H.H. Rogers, Speaker of the House Thomas B. Reed, Lillian Russell, Enrico Carsuo and Elsie de Wolfe. The house was later owned by D.W. McCord but burned in 1920. It sat on Hither Lane.

Archibuff, I am president of the board of a small house museum. We try hard to keep restoring the house back to its appearance in 1820. The exception is a giant hop vine, which would destroy the clapboards.

I agree it’s a good looking house; but the floor plan is a little odd (to me), even for 1899:• The entrance hall is more like a reception room because even though it’s a large area from there your only two choices are to go onto the porch or into the living room.• There is no bathroom or half-bath on the ground floor.• There are no back / servants’ stairs – the only two staircases to the second floor is the internal staircase in the round projection seen in the first photo & the external staircase also seen in the first photograph. The only stairs to the third floor are on the landing near the interior staircase.• The floor plan shows nine bedrooms, no servants’ rooms, on the second floor – but only two bathrooms. Even the master bedroom suite – two bedrooms separated by a sitting room (over the entrance hall & porch in the first picture) does not have its own bathroom.Maybe Mrs. Jeanne Durant Rice divorced Dr. Clarence C. Rice over his aversion to indoor plumbing? Or, as they say in country music: maybe she was just dissatisfied so she wanted a D I V O R C E. I found an episode of ‘Antiques Roadshow’ where they were appraising a piece of pottery from the Durant Kilns in Bedford, NY – good looking pottery & valued at between $1 & $2 thousand.

DED, have you considered covering your house museum in artificial hop vine? You could wait until they were having a clearance sale at ‘Michaels.’